Evaluation
Week 1
For the firs week my goals are to set up the website with all the needed pages, start the context page and follow use the tasks from the brief of the project to navigate me.
The task for the Context on the brief was to
1. Have a detailed analysis of my target audience
2. mood board of my learning.
Also I looked for some logos and talked about colors design and style. The logos included ones from different industries, in order to add some variety and to see if there was some consistence in style or design thought out all the different industries. Thsi helped me find what the general modern trends for logos are.
Week 2
For this week my plan is to make a moodboard of logos and talk about what industry they are from and talk about their target audience and talk about their most distinctive features that they share. After that it is time to talk about my target audience and analyse it. That can be an age group, community or can be link with what my next move is for example university or apprenticeship.
Week 3
After I finish with the tasks for the context, I will need to move to the Research page. In the brief for the project we have a task to find and analyse 4 logos that appeal to our target audience, or are linked to it in some way. That will help me find what features I could use in order to make my logo appealing to my audience.
I did manage to get 3 logos at first and I analysed their design, and symbolism or the colours that were chosen and I talked a little about the typography that was used for the logos. I'll need to do the last logo for analysis, next week and if not, the I need to get it done as soon as possible.
Week 4 & 5
During this weeks I plan to finish all relevant research on the logos. Strat the production of the still logo with making sketches of possible designs, comparing them and experiment with it colours and details. This week and next week (week 5) are during half-term I don't expect to do much work as I will be very busy during the holidays, but I will try to follow my production schedule.
I stared doing still logo at the beginning of the 5th week. I did the outlines of the dragons and added the colour afterwards. I am still undecided about the colour because I have few ideas, so I plan to do some more experiments with colour in order to decide.
Week 6
This is the first week after the half term and I plan to continue working on the still logo, and experiment with colours and textures, and also take and add screenshots of my practical progress until now I couldn't take any screenshots because my computer at home doesn't let me take them. I need to add hem to my Planning and Production page, as well as add some of the bits there to practical skills page.
I think I have very little sketches done for the designing bit so I will do more inj depth sketches of my other ideas and experiment with them, by mixing them with eachother or adding new details.
Week 7
This week I need to follow my production schedule and start the animation. I had hard time deciding how I'm going to go with the animation, because after I finished the still logo I wasn't sure if I have enough time to do what I originally planned. I have two options in mind, to go with traditional frame by frame animation or to go with vector based animation. To decided I will have to research on vector based animation and decide if I will have the time and skills to use it for the animation. At the moment I am more keen on going with frame by frame animation as I am more confident with it and I know how to use the software. As what I want to do might take quite long time, my plan B is to go to Adobe After Effect and add a fire effect to the still logo.
Week 8
Targets for the week:
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Research on How to mask in Adobe animate
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Start Frame by Frame animation
I believe that after completing this targets for the week will help me decide what to go with. logo is a way to show your skills and what you can do, it is logical that I use frame by frame, as it is an asset in my skills and Vector based animation isn't yet.
22/01
After starting with the frame by frame animation I realized that it will take me a long time to actually get the animated logo done. I think it will look great if I get it done but, since I only have 2 weeks left of the project I need to get it done, which means that I will need to use my plan B go to after effects and add some fire effect to my logo. However while I was still working on the frame by frame animation I found this video on how to create an animated mask in Animate, so I gave it a go and it worked out pretty good.
final evaluation
For this project my aimed was to create a 2D printable A4 logo and an animated (HD1080) logo according to the brief.
The both the printable and animated logo turned out very well, I am extremely happy with them as they turned out exactly how I imagined the especially the animated logo. For it I had the storyboard in my head and then on the page and I held to that trough out the project, as I was very determined and exited about the idea. I am very happy with the smoothness and motion of the animation. I found it surprisingly easy to animate. The printable logo in my opinion looks very professional and stands out quite well. I am very happy with the colours I chose as the red dragons contrast very well against the greyish-white background.
I had another attempt based on a tutorial I watched and I thought of it as a plan B in case I am not able to finish the original idea. When I finished it it looked alright but wasn't exactly what I wanted out of this project. I had a specific idea of what I wanted out of this project and getting this outcome was satisfactory for the project, but not for me.
I think regarding the actual logo what I could do improve, is to maybe research more creative ways to animated the shift from the animated logo to the coloured one. Maybe also think about more smooth change from the sketchy to the completely coloured. With more time and better skills that could be very effective logo animation, and would look much more professional.
My inspiration for the logo was my last year logo that I produced for the quick project in which we had to create creative CVs. The original koi fish logo was inspired by my zodiac sign of Pisces. I think it looks beautiful and very simple and can be made very creative. I decided to do the koi fish at the time as I thought are very elegant and gentle looking and their scales colour can be very variable. I kept the shape of the Pisces and instead of fish I changed it to dragons, because I like the contrasting symbolism of the two.
In this project I relearned how to mask in Photoshop, which I find as a very useful tool to know. I also learned how to mask in Animate, which is slightly more different than how it works in Photoshop, but can be a very useful and interesting effect to play with. I also learned the very useful skill of installing brushes to Photoshop and found a website where to get them from. This is very useful as brushes and stamps can be the key to finding and applying an effect to my work.
Strengths:
I think my strengths for this project were mainly the fact that I knew what I wanted to get out of it. I knew what I wanted to produce and I knew where to get the resources I need from. I was confident and familiar with the softewares I used, which significantly sped up my production time. I could manage the production and writing process, by writing what I did for on a piece of paper or in a note book, so I won't forget it, and then I wrote it on the website. That was something I was struggling with most of my previous project so I was very happy this way worked good for me. In addition I think my final outcomes are pretty strong. I am very proud with both of them, in my opinion the look quite professional, and show my skills and my abilities. I think that my animation is quite smooth considering the time I had to finish it was 4 days, because I did another animation before that as thought that I may not have enough time to finish my initial idea.
Weaknesses:
I didn't follow my production schedule closely for the lat few week since I started my production started, and I was too busy with the production and the planning & production page, that I didn't have the time to go and update it. Also in my previous final evaluations I have said that I will try to work with weekly SMART targets, but I didn't, again, and this is why I think why my organisation wasn't the best in this project, even thought I managed to complete both the printable and the animated Logo. Also I would get distracted sometimes which probably made few of my pages suffer a little.
Context Page:
The task we had for the Context page, was to identify my target audience and to demonstrate my understanding of their characteristics. The evidence I required is 1. A detailed analysis of the audience , A moodboard of my audience. First what I did was to get some logos and talked about their design and how many logos have changed over the time dependent on their target or general audience. I also put some animated logos and discussed then in order to have an idea or a starting point when I move on to the next steps. I created a moodboard, a collage of different images, now that I look back at it I realise that to all the logos that I used were necessarily linked to my target audience, which is a part I missed in this. I did the analysis of my target audience by linking it back to the moodboard. I discussed the different logos and their audiences I mainly talked about the generational difference between the audiences. At the time I didn't think of adding and talking about different communities for example and their characteristics. I also talked about how the logo designs have generally changed, and how most of them have become quite minimalistic with bright and bold colours. After that I moved on to discussing my target audience. Since I mostly work in 2D my target audience must be people who enjoy or also work in 2D. I not only included the age but the community or potential job, or University interviewer. With the help of a call task during one of our lessons, it was easy to determine the characteristics and rules I needed to follow in order to attract my target audience.
I think I could discuss in more depth the characteristics of my audience, for example the art style type of animation that they may enjoy. In addition to that I also added a proposal of what I want to produce. I discussed how my idea is related to my target audience considering its requirements.
Research:
For this page the first main task was to provide a detailed analysis of at least 4 logos for my target audience, I choose 4 logos, 2 of them were anime logos, one was the Dreamworks logo, and the forth was a logo from a quite new TV series that I watched recently. I think that captures my target audience very well, as I looked at the different groups in my target audience. I talked about their design, colour, at times symbolism where appropriate and why I liked them. I think I could go in more depth with the techniques that were used on them to get the effect they have, for example on the logo where the dragon that is biting it's tail, an effect called grunge was used, which gives '' graffiti-like'' effect and makes in look worn out. I find about it just now, because I was not able to name the effect at the time, and because I couldn't name it I didn't pay attention to it. Now that I know about it I realise how important is to ask about things that I can't name but notice.
the second task was continue with any technical research that supports my production. That included all the research and new skills I leaned during the project. I think I did pretty well with identifying and analysing the tutorials I watched. Most of the time I manged to find what I needed straight away. I explained hat I wanted to do what I needed the tutorial for. I think I added all the necessary as there was not much technical research that I had to do for this project, as my goal was to use my current skills in order to produce my logo.
Problem Solving
My problem solving page is often quite empty, It is not often that I come across problem, and even if I do come across minor ones, I don't realise they are problems. I have no issue identifying the big ones and managing them but it is the small ones that miss, and don't put on the page, as I get them fixed very quickly and move on to my next task or continue with my production.
Planning & Production:
I think so far my planning & production page is y best page, as I have included everything that I did for the production of the logos. I took a lot of screenshots in order to show the process and I explained the steps the I was taking. I explained all the processes of the production, explained what I was doing and what I thought about the production process. I don't think I missed anything and I don;'t think the page is lacking much except maybe some more sketches of my ideas, and a clearer storyboard. I am very happy with the page and how it looks and its content. I think the screenshots and the photos, supported by the explanations show quite well the entire production process. Also I think that the use of the rendered videos of each finished animation look quite good at the end of each section of screenshots, as they show how the final product looks before the ''Presentation'' page.
Practical Skills
On the practical skills page I added all the new skills and tools that I used and some of the tools I used doing the production. I also added some of the sketches and drawings I did during the project, eve-thought some of them were not related to project at all, I just thought that it will be a good idea to show what else I managed to do in the meanwhile. I explained the techniques I used during the production, even-thought I did the same on the planning and production, but o this page I had to be more technical and not go too much in the actual production. Overall I think the page could use some more screenshots but there was not much too add as most of the things I used I already knew, and mentioned on the Planning & Production page.
Evaluation & Reflection
I did a weekly evaluation in the form of setting goals and talking what I have to do each week according to my production schedule. I wanted to use the SMART target format in order to set achievable targets for each week but I didn't because I jumped on the pages and worked more them instead. I did mention what I needed to do each week, but I kept forgetting to mention if I have achieved them or not, I never found enough time to just work on the evaluation and the idea that I had of sitting down and doing the evaluation first before I start doing other work didn't help as well, because I will only have the production of the logo on my mind and the other pages to deal with so I forget to do the evaluation. I did find it helpful to write on paper and then on the website, but I discovered that near the end of the project, pretty much the last 2 weeks, so I was a bit late with that.
I think that if I make a more detailed production schedule with specific targets, maybe plan each day out, I will be able to be organised and not get distracted often.
Evaluation of my logo:
I am quite happy with my logo, I think it is pretty successful and I'm very glad that I managed to complete it and make it the way I wanted it to look. To guide me in order to create the logo for my target audience I had some characteristics and rules that I followed. Firstly the main rule for my logo was it it should be 2D. On my Context page I have analysed and explained some significant 2D features ( flat, little shading, bright colours). I think I have managed to get most of these characteristics, especially the with the lack of shading. I kept in mind the fact that most contemporary logos were quite minimalist, and I did talk about that in my context page, and that is why I've been aiming for something simple but bring its best features out. This is why I think that the colour red on the greyish-white background was a very successful choice. Dragons are often associated with red anyway, and I needed a way to make them more original but still familiar and impactful. One of my inspirations was on of the logos I analysed on the research page, The one where the dragon is biting its tail. My own logo is very similar to it with its colour and effect. And the logo if from the anime ''Full Metal Alchemist'', so I think it should be quite appealing to to that audience.
With the animated logo was aiming to show my animating skills and that was meant to appeal to potential job offers, or universities interviews, as they might want to have an idea of my skills, so I think that was a successful idea as well. I wanted to leave the animation without any colours in order to show hoe the process looks and then for it to be replaced by the complete and coloured logo. That was my initial idea I and thought that it will be nice to combine the two.